Thursday, August 26, 2004

Teletoon has been having ads of late for its new fall schedule. Some of it looks interesting, Undergrads is back to infect a new group of wouldbe fans, but they're also gonna play The Flintstones.

Sorry Teletoon, but I do not need to see the bloody Flintstones again. Here in Saskatoon when I was a kid CFQC played the series weekdays at noon forever. There was a time, and its probably hasn't changed that much, when I could see an episode for 10 seconds or less and tell you which one it was. I could probably recite chunks of the dialogue from each episode as well. So its one show I don't need to see ever again, especially if they only buy a half or a quarter of the episodes and play them 16 times over the next 6 months.

The series was very much a ripoff of The Honeymooners, with Fred in the place of Ralph Kramden and Barney as Ed Norton. An early episode even features Fred doing a variation on Ralph's perennial "to the Moon, Alice!" threat. And Mel Blanc's original Barney voice sounds very much like Art Carney's portrayal of Norton, and perhaps changed because it was too close. Ironically given that the show is now considered classic kiddy fodder it was obviously intended for a more general audience, just as the classic Warner Brothers cartoons were obviously intended to entertain people older than six.